Nerd Stalker

6mins Interview with Trevor Goss, founder of ideakick. From the ideakick site: So you want to know what happens at an ideakick? Well, here’s your answer… IDEA PITCHES The main point of coming to an ideakick is to pitch an idea that you have for something… anything. This might be something you’ve been thinking about for 6 months or it might be something you’ve been thinking about for 6 minutes. It’s all good. Basically what happens is you get to stand up in front of the group and tell them what your idea is. You have a total of 10 minutes, and in that 10 minutes you can use as much time as you want to tell everyone about your idea. Once you’re done, everyone else in the room gets to use the rest of the time that’s left to “kick” the idea around. Don’t stress about whether your pitch is refined or not. This isn’t like you’re testifying before Congress or anything like that. All you really need to do is say enough to get the conversation started. You might talk about a specific id...

Clipped from: www.amazon.com ( share this clip ) Have you ever read one of those books you know was packed with critical information only to realize you retained only a fraction of it? This is what happened to me in this book due in part to a tendency for the heavy use of academic corporate lexicon as opposed to a more every persons conversational digestible tone. This is a shame as the critical lessons in The New How could reach so many more, much like author’s Jason Fried and Tony Hsieh have successfully done. That opinion aside it was an amazing feat to chronicle detailed business (mainly enterprise) lessons both successful and failed, dissect them in turn produce a framework for successful strategy creation. The artwork is very well done, (nice to see an author who considers design) it did enhance the experience and retention of some points. The latter part of the book is where things really shine, this is where we do get that conversational tone from Nilofer that I wish would hav...

Clipped from: www.20thingsilearned.com ( share this clip ) Google creates a beautiful HTML5 book, have a look.

The World Without Photoshop.... NOW AVAILABLE IN iTUNES! from dan marcolina on Vimeo . Read More

Nerd Stalker has the honor of being a longtime media partner for SF New Tech and during that time we have seen many a startup present. Sure there have been a few flops but for the most part we’ve been blown away by great demos. Increasingly startups are approaching us asking how best to present for the format. I finally got around to writing some observations on what seems to work vs. what (in my opinion) does not. Although this is specific to the 5 minute SF New Tech format, we think that some of this can apply across the board. We hope some of you entrepreneurs who take the brave leap to present can gain some value from this post. Be warned if your not the first presenter, chances are your going to swap in a laptop, ipad or some device to an external display. This tends to work quickly about 70% of the time so try to nail it. Make sure your battery is fully charged and bring your own dongle(s) you'd be amazed how many presenters miss these basic steps. If your relyi...

Adobe gives us a sneak preview of Edge an interesting early stage HTML5 tool.

Moderator: Jay Weintraub ; Creator, LeadsCon Panel: Cindy Cohn ; Legal Director, EFF Bob Bahramipour ; VP of Biz Dev, TRUSTe Robert Scoble ; Rackspace, Inc.

Increase User Engagement With Gaming Techniques (Audio), FailCon 2010 talk. Moderator: Greg Mand ; GSM Consulting Panel: Rebecca Watson ; gWallet Farb Nivi ; Founder,Grockit Mihir Shah ; CEO, Tapjoy

David Pogue giving a talk called, "Gadgets Gone Bad" at FailCon 2010. David delivers a hilarious talk touching on several failed devices he has reviewed and how they went so terribly wrong.

An amazingly candid talk from the ex DIGG CEO, Jay Adelson . Cathy Brooks and Jay talk about his early days in other companies he ran, lessons learned, work/life balance, east coast vs. west coast, why he left DIGG and the (declined) CURRENT.TV and Google acquisition offers. An interesting moment occurs when a woman in the audience notifies Jay of breaking news that DIGG laid off 37% of their staff at that very moment.

Listen to the Steve Blank FailCon 2010 fantastic talk. Customer Development Past Present Future Steve Blank (Not all the same slides from the talk but most are, will swap out if/when they are made available)

Today we are announcing the end of 12seconds. Why?  As you probably know, everything has a life cycle.  12seconds is in its twilight.  After all the new product launches and attempts at a revenue model, fundraising with VCs and late night coding sessions with Jacob hunched over his monitors - it's time to call it.  It is time to end 12seconds. From 12seconds.tv ( share this quote ) I have been fans of video startups in the past such as Seesmic Video , Phreadz , Tokbox and 12secconds . These services are either gone, withering, or in limbo (Tokbox being the only exception). I've had the pleasure of meeting Sol one of the founders of 12seconds and he was nothing short of a gentleman, we are sad to see the Santa Cruz based startup close it's doors. It's ironic given just the other night I see a brand new startup called Nimbb offering a free 30 second web webcam recording feature. The Nimbb business model is charging clients $30/month to access th...

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Clipped from: www.btrax.com ( share this clip ) Listen to our interview with the CEO Brandon Hill.

Clipped from: www.gamasutra.com ( share this clip ) In this in-depth Gamasutra feature, Digital Chocolate (Safari Kingdom, Nanotowns) lead social designer Aki Jarvinen discusses the complexities of attracting social gamers with little patience -- and still teaching them to play your game both effectively and appealingly.

Clipped from: uxmovement.com ( share this clip ) "One of the most important and difficult pages to design for web applications is the pricing table. When users get to your pric ing table, they likely have a basic under stand ing of your web application and what you offer. Now, they want to know how much they have to pay to use your application. If your pricing table isn’t effectively designed for conversions, you are probably losing potential cus­tomers. However, by applying these 5 effective design strategies, you could prevent that from hap­pening, and convert interested users into paying customers." Read More

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If you don't know by now we flat out love SF New Tech, yes we do have the honor of being a media partner but even if we didn't we would beg, borrow or steal to get in to their events. It's just flat out the best meetup in the bay area, we are amazed by how many (and how often) quality startups they showcase. The next meetup on 10/20 is no exception we will most definitely be at Mighty and if your there find us and say hello. Get tickets Red Vines Mike Kelly, Consumer Communications Manager American Licorice Company began making Red Vines in San Francisco in 1920. While the process used to make Red Vines hasn’t changed much in nearly 100 years, the technology used to market the brand is changing dramatically. Introducing the Red Vines World of Sharing, a social media platform engineered to spread goodwill and happiness from the Bay Area to the world. http://www.redvines.com EasySign Sunil Patro, Founder EasySign enables you to sign any document using you...

Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group has identified what he calls a "global achievement gap," which is the leap between what even our best schools are teaching, and the must-have skills of the future: * Critical thinking and problem-solving * Collaboration across networks and leading by influence * Agility and adaptability * Initiative and entrepreneurialism * Effective oral and written communication * Accessing and analyzing information * Curiosity and imagination

Clipped from: failcon2010.com ( share this clip ) FailCon is the premier conference on start-up failures and how to prepare and recover from them. Register Now On October 25th, 2010, join over 400 entrepreneurs, developers, investors, marketers, service providers, press, and more at this year’s FailCon, called a “breath of fresh air” by NBC, a “big success” by Wired. You aren’t a real entrepreneur until you’ve had to deal with failure, and recovering from it – financially emotionally and practically – can be challenging. Hear how major players in the industry have dealt with failure, recovered from it, and kept a positive, tenacious, and energetic attitude through it all. What Will You Learn This Year? * How do VCs handle failing investments? * Online Privacy: How do respect your users while still making money? * What do you do when digital communication and PR goes bad? * How do you sell your business successfully and efficiently? * How do you financially prepare for the possibility ...

San Francisco is 'ground zero' for mobile, Web startups : Clipped from: www.sfgate.com ( share this clip )

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“Were seeing 16 almost 17 minutes per day of engagement" those numbers are stratospheric. Launched in 2008, ItiBiti delivers a private-label consumer engagement platform for the computer desktop (with a mobile version in development for Q1 2011). This app provides an all-in-one social media entertainment and communications platform that is fully customized for each client, providing the ability to launch with their own exclusive content, promotions and advertising. The app is designed to instantly connect the brand with consumers the moment they log-on to their computer. Clipped from: www.itibitisystems.com ( share this clip ) This creates a truly unique custom branded environment that offers exclusive content, sophisticated communication tools and access to their favorite online communities, providing our clients a powerful opportunity to create deeper and richer relationships with their customers. This customized private label communications platform extends the reach of tradit...

We travel across the country, continent and world to have conversations with real users to ensure that we understand their needs and that our design decisions will make their everyday tasks easier and more intuitive to accomplish. But perhaps we can improve our methods by considering an inverse approach: What if our intent was to frustrate, rather than ease? What if we intentionally made things subtly challenging and unintuitive? From www.cooper.com ( share this quote )

Adobe Unveils New Digital Museum (Adobe Featured Blogs) : Clipped from: blogs.adobe.com ( share this clip )

Adobe shares jump on news of Microsoft meeting - MarketWatch : Clipped from: www.marketwatch.com ( share this clip )

CALinnovates.org is a statewide coalition focused on championing the conversation about the future of California’s critical technology sector. CALinnovates.org brings together industry experts, thought leaders, tech innovators, policy makers and consumers in a non-partisan mission to promote innovation, create new jobs, spur investment and support tech-friendly policies. Adolfo Foronda of Nerd Stalker interviews Director of CALinnovates.org Lane Kasselman at this years SF New Tech summer social. CALinnovates.org leads the discussion on technology and innovation throughout California by seeking insight from vested membership and counsel from our advisory board. CALinnovates.org does not focus on every technology related issue facing our state, but will champion the most pressing issues concerning technology companies, end users and our communities. CALinnovates.org is a resource for policy makers in California and beyond as they grapple with policy that affects the innov...

Nerd Stalker interview with founder of OliveWoo , Alex Levy. Their mission is to help couples build better relationships. The focus right now is on creating a repository of cool date ideas to encourage couples to go out on more creative dates. 4mins Episode 87

Clipped from: adolfo.posterous.com ( share this clip ) The error message under the humorous image reads, "Digg has broken an axle. We might have to sell some oxen but we'll be back on the trail soon."

Adolfo Foronda of Nerd Stalker interviews CEO of Clp.ly , John Pettitt at the recent SF New Tech Summer Social. What does clp.ly do? clp.ly allows you to make both visual clips and formatted quotes from web content that you can post on your blog or web site. Clips are screenshots that provide both back links and trackbacks to the original source. Quotes made with clp.ly extract relevant passages from any web content, format them, and also provide both back links and trackbacks to the original source. Clp.ly also creates short links that are easy to tweet and email. The visual clips and formatted quotes generated by clp.ly drive a 5x greater click-through to the original publisher than content distributed via traditional links. From clp.ly ( share this quote ) You can clip any public website or web page with clp.ly. Clicking on a clip will bring you back to the original source of the clip. Your clip will show the format and content of the site or page at the time you creat...

Adobe software never stops being frustrating. Learn to write, and not school-style writing. A text editor is a perfectly viable design tool. Graphic design has just as much to do with words as it does with pictures, and a lot of my favorite designers come to design from the world of words instead of the world of pictures. If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine. Scissors are good, music is better, and mixed drinks with friends are best. Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical. From blog.frankchimero.com ( share this quote ) Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling. From blog.frankchimero.com ( share this quote ) Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. Giving it can also be addicting in a potentially pretentious, soul-rotting sort of way, and can replace experimenting because you think you know how things work...

Nerd Stalker iPad bag review / unboxing of the boa push by booq . Who am I kidding it's my new man/purse or as I like to call it " Murse ". It's amazing how many crappy iPad bags are out there and booq seems to be one of the few companies that are finally coming forward to nail this space. The Boa push iPad messenger provides one of the most compact ways to carry your iPad, iPhone, Droid X, credit cards, a notepad and pens wherever you need to go. Crafted from durable Twylon and genuine Nappa leather, the slim Boa push is equipped with a wide, super-comfy seatbelt nylon shoulder strap and a sturdy snap button flap closure. Each Boa push is tagged with a gunmetal-framed Terralinq serial number. Once registered, the booq Terralinq service may help reunite you with your lost and found bag. External: • 1 pocket on main outer flap for iPhone • 1 large slip pocket on back for flat item storage • 2 pen holders on sides Internal: • 3 credit card slots and 1 ...

Sometime this month, the 5 billionth device will plug into the Internet. And in 10 years, that number will grow by more than a factor of four From www.sfgate.com ( share this quote )

Career guides try to distill jobs into basic components. 'Work hard and get ahead.' 'Be your own advocate.' That sort of thing. But anyone who's been in an office for a while knows that human interaction undermines those components. The real trick -- and it takes a long time to learn this -- is realizing the work system isn't a system at all. It's an arbitrary and ever-changing rule set that often pushes reason to the sidelines. That's a rough conclusion for 'system thinkers,' a category of worker Michael Lopp, author of 'Being Geek' and the blog Rands in Repose, puts himself in. Lopp is a geek. He's a guy who likes order and predictable outcomes. And he understands that system thinkers can face unique pressures in the office. From radar.oreilly.com ( share this quote )

Personally, I think the whole face-off between design and data is, frankly, stupid. It makes for a good conflict story, but it doesn’t reflect reality. It’s a poor way to frame the debate. Data and design should be friends, not enemies. In web design, people click or they don’t. They stay or they go. That’s good to know. But I’ll get to that later. From design2-0.com ( share this quote )

While we were certainly frustrated, we know that no one was more frustrated than you. Your website was down, and I humbly apologize for that. Know that throughout these six days, restoring your site and your trust has been our number one priority. From blog.posterous.com ( share this quote )

Ramine Darabiha interviews Finnish startup Videolla . Videolla allows you to upload videos for free but what is interesting about the about the not yet live service is that they allow you to apply custom fees to the uploaded videos. Key examples would be for educational videos but the possibilities are obviously vast. Videolla is accepting signups for a public beta (come on hurry up guys).

Adolfo Foronda of Nerd Stalker interviews Chintu Parikh , CEO of SachManya about his wysiwyg web application called Yapper . YAPPER is an award-winning, easy and affordable online service for publishers bloggers, newspapers, magazines, video-casters, band, celebrities, and pod-casters to create their own mobile optimized, rich and branded apps that work across iPhone, Android, Blackberry and iPad devices without writing a single line of code! 3.5mins Episode #83

TEEspy , Inc. is a social networking company focused on building an online community for golfers. Adolfo Foronda of Nerd Stalker interviews TEEspy CEO, Andrew Armenante at a recent PlugAndPlay Tech Center expo. The website, TEEspy.com, offers users the ability to find and book tee times from a selection of regional courses. The system directly integrates with golf courses’ computers, allowing for instantly confirmed tee time reservations. Along with bookings, golfers can find other players, track scores, record statistics, and create tournaments within the TEEspy network. TEEspy.com provides golfers with a branded online destination for booking and score reporting. TEEspy is in position to become the combination of Facebook® and OpenTable® for golf.  f51c5891833d424b98c9e5a2a469e119

WebGreek is a simple to use, but powerful management solution for all levels of the Greek system. Isn't this how Facebook started? Nerd Stalker interviews CEO Patrick Allen at a recent Plug And Play expo in Silicon Valley. With WebGreek, Greek letter chapters and councils will be able to collect and manage money for rent and more online, increase event attendance, share files with ease, stay in touch with instant SMS/email tool, and easily manage their website. In addition this technology can be easily white labeled for use in any type of collaborative or group scenario.

Just when we thought ecommerce could not be improved comes the most important change to the space yet from a San Francisco company called Payvment . For the consumer what Payvment boils down to is an internet wide shopping cart, for the developer and businesses it means the potential to greatly increase revenue with virtually no overhead, did we mention it's free ? We think this is a huge disruptor technology, no longer is one tied to some ecommerce specific site, if I owned a company like Shopify I might be very worried. Adolfo Foronda of Nerd Stalker interviews CEO Christian Taylor at a recent PlugAndPlay expo in Silicon Valley. Facebook's #1 E-Commerce Solution Launch an enterprise-grade storefront on your Facebook page with Payvment's Facebook e-commerce solution. Payvment's Facebook app gives you everything you need including a full-featured admin area built directly into Facebook to manage your storefront, products and sales. Plus, when you launch your Facebo...

In his first book, "Delivering Happiness" by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, he shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business; through LinkExchange (acquired by Microsoft for $265 million), Zappos, and more. We will give a free copy of the book to the first viewer who can tell us what company Nerd Stalker interviewed in Episode #1. You must @nerdstalker us on Twitter with the answer to win.

Preview of 'Nigel'. A Twitter client for the iPhone, powered by Phreadz from Phreadz on Vimeo . We can't wait for the iPad version of Nigel, it just looks amazing.

Nerd Stalker contributor Ramine Darabiha interviews founder of FinderBase Petteri Kontio . FinderBase.com is a community where the members help each other find their lost belongings. That means FinderBase.com is a social search engine for anything physical you've lost or found. This service is in beta testing stage.

Nerd Stalker contributor Ramine Darabiha interview with Finland based startup LucSens founder Lulian Florea. LucSens uses state-of-the art technology in computer vision, revealing you the possibility to get instant translation from Chinese or Japanese to English by taking pictures with your mobile device.

Nerd Stalker interview with 3 French startups Green Ivory , All My Apps , and Grand Tweet at a recent SF New Tech. Grand Tweet Grandtweet.com is a service that allows you to send an email to any Twitter user. GreenIvory builds e-marketing tools and technologies and offers solutions that improve the efficiency of your communication on the Internet. Our customers embrace communications agencies (traditional agencies, web agencies...) and companies for whom the web is an essential media for their activity (pure player). AllMyApps Install all your applications in one click.

Nerd Stalker interview with Urban Pre-Game Founder, Ben Fisher in NYC. Urban Pre-game is the first online service to let you buy drinks at a steep discount before you even get to the bar. The more your group buys, the deeper your discount. It's all about ganging up on the price and making the most of your night. Urban Pre-game lets you drink in bars at grocery store prices by buying in bulk with your friends. Pre-buy as a group, but pay for your portion online. The price-per-drink drops as your group's drink total increases. And everyone in your group gets the final low price. Everyone. Pre-gamers collectively saved about $500 at their New Years Eve event. Beer and mixed-drinks at one price that's easy to swallow. Please drink responsibly.

Scred is a Finnish startup that helps groups of people manage their money. It allows bands, associations, businesses, etc, to keep track of their accounting, finance, send invoices, manage an online shop. The business model is a small transaction fee. The service recently launched a "version 2", with an improved design and simplified user experience, which Kristoffer Lawson (co-founder and CEO) describes in the video. Scred is a service for managing money for groups of people. With it you can track income, profit, debt, revenues and shared expenses between the members of a group. Used by e.g. flatmates, travelers, bands, hobby groups, mini-businesses, amateur film creators and artists.

Nerd Stalker contributor Ramine Darabiha , interviews Jori Lallo , one of the founders of Finnish startup Shobble . Shobble is a service that allows users to submit and rate different stores. The site just launched, and currently focuses on women's products. The problem is quite simple: buying products online requires a lot of trust, and in Europe, delivery is often an issue. The service is being built by a single student, Jori Lallo, who happens to be one of the team members of Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, which we've covered earlier here .